Ramblings of an Emergency Physician in Texas

Das Window

&#09I went on the Pilgrimage to Lubbock today, to see the wizard about repairing the driver’s window of my VW. I had called ahead, and as usual they didn’t know me from Adam or that I was coming. I explained the problem to the nice tech writer, and he made notes. I then prepared to wait the requisite several hours to be told ‘we don’t have the part’, or a similar revelation, indicating I had wasted a 2 hour drive.
&#09An hour later, the window is fixed! Eureka! And they were able to fix a silly plastic part at the same time (not the primary problem, and I told the service writer I would be fine if they couldn’t fix it). It was excellent service. As an interesting aside, I think this car’s computer is pretty smart: I tried out my newly-fixed window, and the first two times I tried it the window would close, but the ‘express close’ feature (the same as express down, but in reverse) didn’t work. Then, following two round trips of the window, it worked! I have decided it needed to ‘learn’ the travel / force / something of the window closing before it was willing to do the express feature. Neat.
So, time well spent, and I was back home for lunch. Thank you, Gene Messer Volkswagen, for good service.

While there a nice elderly couple had brought in their Mitsubishi Montero with the complaint that the passenger windows wouldn’t go up with their door switches, only at the drivers’ door. The service tech came in once to confirm the complaint, then, as politely as is humanly possible, explained the Window Lock button, a safety feature located on the driver’s door to keep junior from rolling down the window and doing a header onto the Interstate. They were appropriately embarrassed, and were glad there wasn’t anything wrong with their truck. The tech writer deserves some kudos for how he handled that.

My only gripe is that their waiting room reading material was: a telephone book, VW brochures, a year old Texas Tech leaflet, and a Woman’s Day and Bazaar magazine. As I am not a rain man the phone book was of little interest; the brochures were interesting but had odd phraseology, obviously not written for Americans; Woman’s Day was OK, and the article about trimming trees to make a fence was enlightening. Bazaar is the most pretentious and dull magazine I have ever spent time with; it would have been cast aside except for that awful ‘how can they top that’ feeing while turning the pages. The article about how the beauty editor flew to Britain to have a new cosmetic injection procedure (insert unlimited name-dropping about the doc and his clients), “…which cost only $2000 and can last up to nine months” sealed my opinion. If you have Bazaar in your house you lose points. Big time.